he managed to get entangled in a crim. con. case, which quickly brought him to grief in Sydney. A n arrangement was m a d e with the injured husband which conditioned that Curtis should "make tracks" to V a n Diemen's Land, and he lost no time in doing so. After a brief sojourn there, he arrived in Melbourne, and had no difficulty in finding suitable employment in the counting-house of Messrs. Turnbull, Orr and Co., an old mercantile firm in Collins Street. In 1843 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the T o w n Treasurership. H e finally took to the Press, If Curtis had been steady, and and during his career was on every newspaper in Melbourne. settled down contentedly to his work, he would have been an invaluable ally to any journal, for, though like all the other early reporters, he was practically unskilled in any system of phonography, he attended an important evening meeting, and wrote out, single-handed, between five and six ordinary columns of brevier for the next morning's publication. Curtis was m u c h given to spirituous and fermented enjoyment, yet his imagination was never more active, or his pen more lively, than when he was "three sheets in the wind." Though the converse of an Israelite, there was so m u c h of the Caucasian in his appearance that the first time Sir C. G. Duffy beheld him he was startled at what he believed, for a moment, to be the ghost of the great English statesman afterwards ennobled as Lord Beaconsfield. It was often said of Curtis by one w h o knew him well "That he would sell you for sixpence, and spend a shilling on you." A n d so it was. Poor Jack was the gayest and jolliest fellow that could be found. Wherever he went he carried an atmosphere of fun and dare-devilry about with him, and as a boon companion he had no rival near the throne, for he was the boy to " keep the table in a roar." H e was always in difficulties of some kind—in fact, was never out of a scrape. Ultimately his increasing dissipation drove him off the Melbourne journals, and he had to take refuge on some of the weak suburban saplings then beginning to sprout at Collingwood, Richmond, and other localities. At length there was an end to his tether, and he died very suddenly over twenty years ago. two of the old newspaper identities were oftener in enmity or amity than "Johnny" and "Neddy," as they were universally termed; indeed, they were hardly ever spoken of but as "Johnny Fawkner" and " N e d d y Finn." Though Fawkner had retired from the Patriot, and was never pecuniarily interested in any other journal, you might as well expect an uncaged bird to keep away from a greenwood tree, as "Johnny" to abstain from scribbling. If ever a m a n was incurably afflicted with the cacoethes scribendi et loquendi it was h e ; and whenever the spouting season was slack, and there was no stump to mount, there he was rasping away in the correspondence branch of one of the journals, always ungrammatical, often illogical, but invariably personal and offensive. If he sustained a defeat at one of the m a n y W a r d or other meetings, which were common, the next morning beheld an abusive rhodomontade from his pen, and he was usually a verbose writer. T h e badness of quality was only equalled by the quantity, thereby doubling or trebling the infliction. Fawkner was as irregular in his moods and tenses as the most complicated Greek verb ; as changeable as a chameleon, and as perverse as the most spoiled child.
FAWKNER AND FINN.—No
" Everything by turns, and nothing long,"
He turned his coat as many times as there are weeks in the year. Originally one of the Scoto-«/w-Kerr clique in the T o w n Council, he shifted to the other side, and on one occasion owed his re-election to a coaxing of the Irish vote. For a time he was a true-blue Orangeman, but transferred his hero-worship from William the Third to St. Patrick, whose green banner he soon deserted through some fresh whim. For a time he would select the Herald, as his speaking-trumpet, then fly to the Gazette, make the round of the Daily News, and so on. About a dozen times in every twelve months he subscribed to, and resigned, each of the various journals; and so he went on, a h u m a n whirligig—so eccentric in its motions that no person could possibly guess its next gyration. From politics "Johnny" would m a k e a running leap into polemics, and the Papacy and all its imputed fallacies would be overhauled. H e would fawn upon and flatter the Irish one month, and the next his clumsily executed blarney would be transfused into gall. In m a n y of such controversies
